River Flows Around The Stone
by The Ryuu Victoire Tea Party
Summary: For that single purpose - I am destroyer.


**AN: **Picks up at the end of the BDM, when River just finished kicking some serious Reaver butt and saves everyone's hides.

Introspective piece on River coming to terms with who she is. River-centric, includes all characters.

* * *

**River Flows Around The Stone**

_Or, in some cases, pushes right on through._

Drip.

She could hear the slow, dark liquid as it quietly peeled off the edge of her existence. She was a weapon, sharp, precise, unstoppable.

_No power in the 'verse can stop me._ These words had once frightened Kaylee beyond her wits. She knew this. Of course, it was never fun to scare Kaylee. She knew that. But...

Drip, drip.

But there was power in the fact that her skin was as smooth and as rough as the metal she held in both her palms. There was no separation of her flesh and her axe and her long knife-blade. She was whole, standing there and letting the juice of seventy seven and a third raving minds wash off her. She was a river of unstoppable peril for those tried to hurt Simon, Wash, Kaylee, Zoe, and poor beautiful Serenity, gutted and ravaged. Even here, in the silence and roaring fury that was new death fresh all around her, she could hear the ship's lamentations. Serenity's pilot was dead. Her children were hurt.

Except her. She was the defender of Serenity's defiled dignity. She was the punch that sheltered Simon from the wild, cruel outer fabric of the world. She was the kick that reminded the loud ones to shut up and respect Kaylee and her love for all things beautiful. She was the bullet that protected Jayne from the only force in the 'verse that he truly feared (other than his mother). She was what could buy the Captain some time. Captain who'd listened to her secret, and believed. She was the mighty who defended the weak - even in death the Shepherd and his sheep needed remembering, needed protection.

She was the blade that sliced, and killed, and revenged Wash and Zoe. What was once imperfect and glorious and whole was now torn apart. She'd taken the sun away from the autumn flower, and now winter's barren cold was creeping in. She'd stolen the very beauty of the stars, the price to pay too high to calculate. Her horribly holey mind had sponged in too many terrible things. Children, lovers, beating hearts and sneaky kisses had perished for it.

For eight months (outdated and slightly painful timekeeping method kept from the ancients, but it served its purpose nonetheless) she'd been weaving her path through dreams and consciousness.

Tears. Screaming. Dreaming. Hiding.

She had seen Simon on the ground and the tears would no longer fall. They crawled back into the ducts of her brown eyes and refused to come back out. She had better things to be than a spitting, crying, leaking sponge. It was time for something different now.

Drip.

Drip drip drip.

God could not make her a stone - she was water. Bending and slippery and wavelike - until the currents and the downpour broke the earth and the metals within and carved a path. The river flows around stone, 'till the need to push right on through arises in the spring when the waters overflow.

Eyes wide open and wide, you could glimpse at your face through the others. You looked awake.

Breathe, and then run. Leap through the opened enclosure. Activate the doors and rig them to close tight. Carve a path into the exposed bottleneck and hold the line.

Hold the line.

Her heart did not falter. Time slowed as she felt a cold emptiness take over her insides. Her enemies were tearing and grasping and crawling at the edges of her being and she would give everything she had to hold this line.

_She loves Serenity and her children. She loves Simon. _

_For that single purpose - I am destroyer._

The walls behind her fall, and the soldiers yell and there is chaos.

Drip. Drip.

The soldiers want to shoot, she can feel them squeezing triggers in their heads. Anxiety rolls in swift yellow gusts all over the place. Serenity's children are afraid and shocked beyond words - they do not believe their eyes. The girl should be in pieces on the floor, ravaged by seventy seven and a third ghosts of death.

As for the soldiers, they think she is a Reaver, standing alone over a hill of Reaver carcasses. They don't realize she is a River and for them a River is much, much worse. She turns her eyes to them, confirming carefully what she already knows. She is ready.

Drip.

The soldiers stand down. The command wasn't a siren's deceit, but the resonant holy song of angel trumpets.

She is just a shadow of a weapon now, her mind less sharp and more sponge-like. The River-weapon lets herself apart.

No more fighting. Serenity has been avenged.


End file.
